Archive for the ‘Minimalism’ Category

Today’s the last day of February and the last day of The Minimalist Game, http://www.theminimalists.com/game/. I’m going “play again” in March, since I’m not done getting rid of things.

Some of the things on today’s list of items include: punch bowl with matching cups, sleeping bag (not ever going to camp again), badminton racquets and birdie, four college yearbooks, four t-shirts, five milk crates, two kites and kite string, and 30 years of photographic negatives.

During this purging process there have been places I have bumped up into emotionally difficult groups of things. Other times it’s felt too tough to deal with either the shear volume of stuff (either sorting through or lugging it out of a closet or the basement) and I have turned away. The negatives were the first really emotionally difficult thing to toss. There were a lot of them, organized and labeled, neatly and carefully stored in a couple of containers. But, like the kites and kite string, I hadn’t used them in a very long time. And, realistically I’m not ever going to. They aren’t adding value to my life and they were just taking up space. They remind me of what I haven’t done (some sort of photo project) instead of inspire me to do something creative and new.

I can already feel the freedom that comes with less clutter. With fewer things I feel lighter and more able to just get stuff done. There’s a lot more to go, and I’m sure there will be hard things to part with in the future. Even so, I’m looking forward to playing another round next month.

After reading “Everything That Remains” I became inspired to reduce the number of items in my house. “Everything That Remains” chronicles the journey the authors, Joshua and Ryan, made to becoming minimalists. It’s not a “how to” book but more of a “why” to book.

On their website there are some examples of the things they tried when making the transition, like canceling the internet at home and NOT buying anything for a period of time. At the beginning of February I noticed the Minimalist Game, in which one item gets purged on the first of the month, two things get purged on the second of the month, and so on, until the last day of the month when, in the case of February, 28 things go. It adds up to over 400 by the end of the month.